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<title>The Devil&#8217;s Dictionary: Y</title>
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<h1>Y</h1>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">Yankee</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> In
Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In
the Southern States the word is unknown. (See DAMNYANK.)</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">year</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A period
of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">yesterday</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The
infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire past of age.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">But yesterday I should have thought me blest<br />
To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak<br />
Of middle life and look adown the bleak<br />
And unfamiliar foreslope to the West,<br />
Where solemn shadows all the land invest<br />
And stilly voices, half-remembered, speak<br />
Unfinished prophecy, and witch-fires freak<br />
The haunted twilight of the Dark of Rest.<br />
Yea, yesterday my soul was all aflame<br />
To stay the shadow on the dial’s face<br />
At manhood’s noonmark! Now, in God His name<br />
I chide aloud the little interspace<br />
Disparting me from Certitude, and fain<br />
Would know the dream and vision ne’er again.</p>

<p class="citeauth">Baruch Arnegriff</p>
</div>

<p class="indentpara">It is said that in his last illness the poet Arnegriff was attended at different times by seven
doctors.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">yoke</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An
implement, madam, to whose Latin name, <i>jugum</i>,
we owe one of the most illuminating words in our language—a word that defines
the matrimonial situation with precision, point and poignancy. A thousand
apologies for withholding it.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">youth</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The
Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a
following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer.</p>

<p class="poetry">Youth is the true Saturnian Reign,<br />
the Golden Age on earth again,<br />
when figs are grown on thistles,<br />
and pigs betailed with whistles and,<br />
wearing silken bristles,<br />
live ever in clover,<br />
and clows fly over,<br />
delivering milk at every door,<br />
and Justice never is heard to snore,<br />
and every assassin is made a ghost<br />
and, howling, is cast into Baltimost!</p>

<p class="citeauth">Polydore Smith</p>

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